


We'll Always Have Cwllent

by in_lighter_ink



Category: Cabin Pressure, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_lighter_ink/pseuds/in_lighter_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere, in a camping spot near a bit of Wales that rhymes with Kent, two gingers meet. One of them is waiting, the other is pretending to fly a small plane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Always Have Cwllent

**Author's Note:**

> Erm. I've taken a tiny bit of creative license with ages here. Timey-wimey stuff, you know? Set mostly pre-series for Cabin Pressure and sometime in the neighborhood of series 5 of Doctor Who. 
> 
> Originally written for the Cabin Pressure fanwork exchange.

He absolutely needed some new t-shirts. He couldn't put off buying them any longer: one was starting to disintegrate, one had too many holes to hide, and one had gone pink from being accidentally washed with Adam's new red boxer shorts.

Not that he didn't appreciate the students occasionally throwing some of his laundry in with theirs. Really. It saved him a lot of time.

He didn't even mind that the shirt was pink. He could still wear it around the house. But he was afraid it would show through the white button-up of his pilot's uniform (he could _hear_ Douglas now), and he was a little too aware of how badly it clashed with his hair to wear it on van jobs.

It took some careful finance-juggling (he _should_ be all right: there were some longish flights coming up, and the current crop of students liked to eat together, and often invited him -- he didn't like to rely on their kindness, but he would if he had to -- so he could stretch the food he had for another two weeks), but he reckoned he had enough for a couple of Primark's most basic t-shirts. Maybe more than a couple, if he could find them on clearance. 

He had to go through the accessories and jewelry bit to get to the men's section, and it was in the accessories and jewelry bit that he'd gotten himself stuck. It wasn't for the first time -- he often got stopped by bored-looking make-up girls and slightly frightening perfume ladies telling him about products that would be great gifts for his girlfriend. The perfume ladies always got an unsettlingly predatory gleam in their eyes when he flushed and stuttered out something about not _having_ a girlfriend.

There was probably a reason that going through the perfume and jewelry section was the only way to get to menswear.

But this time, an advert had caught his eye and he'd stopped dead, not even trying to hide from the pushiest of people trying to sell him things he didn't need and couldn't afford anyway. He'd even forgotten to be embarrassed about standing in public with his mouth open.

Because there she was.

Right there in front of him, on a poster selling some perfume called Petrichor, which proclaimed itself to be for the girl who was tired of waiting.

He smiled.

She'd been waiting when he'd met her. He was glad it seemed like she didn't think she had to anymore.

***

Martin rather liked camping. Well, mostly, anyway. He didn't like having to share a tent with Simon, who was always complaining about being away from his model trains for so very long. But even that was better than sharing with Caitlyn, who didn't let anyone forget that she was a Girl Guide and therefore knew everything there was to know about being outdoors. 

But Martin rather liked camping, when he could escape all that. ("You can go play, but keep the tents in sight at all times, Martin. And don't put anything in your mouth!" As if he would. He wasn't a _baby_. He was going to be ten soon. Just because he was shorter than everyone else didn't mean he was younger, too.) There wasn't anyone around to make fun of him, it was quiet, and he could see the sky all the time. 

_And_ he'd been allowed to bring the Airfix de Havilland DH.88 Comet he'd made all by himself with only a little help from his dad. 

It looked brilliant, silhouetted against the sky.

He was lying on his back in a relatively stick- and rock-free clearing he'd found. No trees to get in the way of the little plane's voyage across Martin's patch of sky. If he squinted just right, he could pretend that it was _really_ up there, that he was _really_ flying. 

He could even very nearly feel the wind against his face.

And then it was all spoiled by a bunch of bright ginger hair blocking the blue of the sky. 

"What're you doing?" the hair asked. 

Martin's eyes went wide and he scrambled to a sitting position, cradling the Comet protectively. At this angle, the hair turned out to be on top of an actual person. A girl-type person. A girl-type person wearing red wellies and holding a doll that looked like it had seen better days.

"Wh- who are you?"

"Amelia Pond," the girl said. To Martin's horror, she dropped down to sit right across from him, doll in her lap. "What's your name? And why were you waving that plane around?"

"I'm Martin. Martin Crieff. Martin. I mean, Simon calls me Marty sometimes, but I don't really like it. Most people call me Martin. I was, um…" he paused. He didn't really want to tell her he'd been pretending to fly it. Everyone always laughed when he said things like that.

"I bet you were flying. Were you?"

He could only blink at her in shock. She'd been completely serious, and didn't seem to think that was weird _at all_.

Slowly, tentatively, he jerked his chin down and back up. Just once.

"That's fun." She had a little bit of a lisp, just like he did. "I met a man with a spaceship once."

"What?" 

"Aunt Sharon says he's just my imaginary friend really, but I know he was real." Amelia looked down at the doll, patted it on the head.

"Is… is that him?" Martin asked, pointing shyly to the raggedy thing. He rather thought it was make believe, too, except… 

Except make believe was _important_. Make believe made him a real pilot. 

She nodded, propped the doll up to sit a little straighter, a little taller on her lap. "He's called the Doctor."

"He had a spaceship?" Now that she was sitting, and not towering over him, Martin began to relax a little bit. She hadn't laughed at him, _and_ he was pretty sure that she was younger than he was. So not quite as scary as she'd appeared at first blush.

"A blue one. He said it had a swimming pool in the library."

"Really? And it flew and everything?"

She nodded again, then tilted her head to one side, considering. "Well, sort of. It mostly crashed. That's why he's a bit ragged, see?" She pointed out the doll's torn clothing, which Martin had thought had been damaged by age and use. After all, he had a few toy planes that had crashed a couple of times, before he'd gotten better at flying.

"Right. Where's he now?" he asked, expecting a story about Amelia's latest adventure with her Doctor. She seemed like she'd like telling stories, and it would save Martin from having to think of things to say. 

But, instead of getting excited, Amelia looked down at the ground, shoulders slumping. "Don't know," she answered, voice gone soft and sad. "He said he just had to fix his ship. He was supposed to be right back, and then I could go with him. But he didn't come back."

Martin was a bit at a loss. Make believe wasn't supposed to be _sad_.

"Oh. I didn't… I didn't mean… I'm sorry." He looked down, poked at the place on the tail where the paint had got a bit smeared. When he looked back up, she was looking at him, a resigned look on her face.

"It's okay. He'll be back sometime. Probably."

"Maybe he got lost? Flying can be pretty hard. Normal flying, I mean. Like in an aeroplane. So I bet flying a spaceship would be even harder."

"Yeah. That's what I think." She smiled then, and Martin breathed a sigh of relief. Caitlyn cried sometimes, and when she did, she usually threw things. Mum said that was just because she was a teenager, but Martin wasn't taking any chances.

"You talk about flying a lot. Are you going to be an aeroplane pilot when you grow up?"

Martin smiled back at her. She'd made it sound like it was an actual possibility. No one else ever did. "Yeah. I hope so, anyway. I want to be." He opened his mouth to talk about the sorts of planes he wanted to fly -- all of them -- but then frowned, suddenly remembering things his parents and his teachers always said about wandering off and being safe. He'd started to like Amelia, and he didn't want anything bad to happen to her. "Is your Aunt Sharon here, too? Nearby, I mean. Well, obviously. You're Scottish, you didn't get to Wales all on your own, so. I mean, you didn't, right? But you know how to get back to wherever she is?"

Amelia sighed at him. The look on her face was one Martin recognized: Mum got the same one sometimes. Her word for it was 'exasperated,' but Martin didn't really know what that meant. It wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best, either. "Yeah. But she's on the phone. Something important about work." 

"Oh. Okay."

Amelia shrugged, and Martin got the impression that sort of thing happened pretty often. "My mum and dad work a lot, too. And Simon and Caitlyn -- that's my brother and sister -- they're older, so they don't really want to play with me that much. Simon says I'm too little to play with his trains, but I'm not. I'd be careful. But. I like planes better anyway. So, well. I know… I play by myself a lot, too. But I really like planes, so it's okay. Like your Doctor. I mean, there are always, you always have… he's always there, in your head, even if he's not _really_ there, right?"

She tilted her head to the side again. "I guess so." She looked down at her doll again, with its torn-up shirt and untidy tie. And she smiled at it. "When he comes back, maybe we can come over to your house for a visit. Where do you live?"

Martin wasn't really sure what to say to that. No one ever wanted to visit _him_. "I-- Wokingham. In England. But it's pretty far away. It's five hours in the car, but…" he trailed off, thought a moment, and then brightened. "That's only because we have to stop at the services a lot, so maybe it's not that far. But if you had a spaceship, it wouldn't be that far at all. You really… you would want to?" For a moment, he forgot that the Doctor was supposed to be make believe.

She nodded. "It'd be fun. Do you like fish fingers?"

They made plans until the sun started to go down. Amelia wrinkled her nose at the darkening sky. "I have to go soon. Aunt Sharon said I was supposed to be back by --"

"Martin! Martin?"

He looked over his shoulder. "It's okay. That's my mum."

"Okay. See you soon, Martin."

And then she was gone, leaving Martin staring after the first _real_ friend he'd ever made.

***

"Amelia? Amelia _Pond_?"

She was bent over a pad of paper on her lap, ginger hair falling across and obscuring her face. Martin couldn't tell whether she was writing or drawing, but either way, she didn't look up. "It's Amy. What do you want? And how do you know my name?"

"Oh. I'm Martin? Martin Crieff. Still Martin. I mean, I've always been Martin, but I'm still _called_ Martin. Not anything else. We met. A few years ago. You might not remember? You had red wellies on. Well, of course you might remember the red wellies. They were your red wellies, so. But you were wearing them and I was there, too. I didn't have red wellies. I --"

"You were flying an aeroplane." Somewhere in the middle of his impromptu speech, she'd looked up at him.

Martin grinned. "Yes. I was."

Amelia -- _Amy_ \-- hadn't been camping in Cwllent for the last few years. Or at least not at the same time the Crieffs had. Martin had looked for her every year, though, even though he knew that things like that, like finding the one girl in the universe who'd seemed to actually like him, didn't actually ever happen to him. 

"So are you a pilot yet?"

"You. You remembered?"

"It's not like I meet ginger boys on their backs in the woods pretending to fly planes every day, silly."

"Right. No. Probably you wouldn't. Especially if you didn't live anywhere near a lot of trees. Well, there might be a lot of trees, but there's a difference between a lot of trees and woods, isn't there? A lot of trees is just a lot of trees, but woods are…" he gestured lamely around him, trying without very much success to encompass the intrinsic woodliness of the trees around them.

"Yeah. Ooo-kay." She drew the words out, slow and incredulous.

Martin's heart sunk into the pit of his stomach. Five years had gone by, and she'd become like everybody else: about to laugh at him for how awkward and stupid he was. And how red faced and spotty and short and small. 

She'd remembered him, but maybe that wasn't such a good thing after all.

"Well?" 

Martin's eyes went wide. She sounded impatient, and he wasn't sure what it was that he was meant to be doing. Going away and not bothering her, he supposed. 

"Right. You're right. I'll just… I thought since we'd. Before. But, no. You're right." He turned to go, fully prepared to trudge off to some other place where he could watch the sky and avoid Simon and Caitlyn.

"Oi. Aeroplane boy. Where do you think you're going, then?"

He spun around so quickly that he almost fell over. "You want me to…? Stay?"

She fixed him with the same exasperated look as she had five years before. 

"Oh. Right." He sat down, an awkward rearrangement of knees and elbows, made more difficult this time because of the extra effort he was putting into making sure he didn't fall over. 

Somehow, though, he managed a glimpse of what she'd been working on. A man wearing a suit, a girl with long hair, and a phone box. 

She caught him looking and hugged the unfinished drawing to her chest. "Less of that, thanks." She almost sounded angry, but Martin could see that there was just a little bit of a blush creeping across her cheeks. 

Also, she'd gotten _pretty_ since the last time they'd met.

"No, I didn't mean. I'm sorry. I - It was - It wasn't because…" He tripped over his words, face getting hotter and hotter until he was sure that he was redder than he'd ever been before. He was also sure that, any moment, she was going to reconsider and tell him to bugger off. Every other girl did. Especially the pretty ones. "A phone box?" 

Martin clapped his hands over his traitorous mouth.

"Don't even start with that. No, it's not a normal phone box, it's a ship. Yes, I know phone boxes aren't blue. This _isn't_ a phone box, it's a _ship_. And yes, I know the difference between real and imaginary! And I'm not 'repressing' anything, or escaping anything, or making anything up!"

It sounded like she'd said it all before, too many times. "I wasn't going to say any of that, though. I was just… How does the library fit? Or the controls, or the passengers, or anything?"

"You remember the library?" 

He nodded. "There's a swimming pool."

Amy loosened her grip on the sketchpad, put it back down flat in her lap. "And you're not just humoring me but really thinking that I'm some sort of lunatic, which I'm not, thank you very much?" 

Martin shook his head. He knew about being humored, about being nodded at and pat on the head and told, _Of course you are, pet, but really you're going to be an electrician just like your dad, aren't you._ "No. I don't, really I don't. You don't keep something like that, like your Doctor, for so long and with everyone thinking you're a nutter for it, if it's not real. If it's not important. Or at least I don't think so."

"You really don't, do you?" She looked away, started playing with her hair. "Aunt Sharon's making me go to a therapist. I hate it."

Martin didn't know how to answer that. It was a little out of his depth -- he didn't know anyone who'd ever been to a therapist before, except for a boy in his class who said he'd had to go because his parents were getting a divorce. But that was different.

"But they'll see. The Doctor will come back, and they'll all see."

Martin knew he should probably say something about the therapy, about how he was sorry she had to go when she didn't want to, but he still didn't know what to say. "He hasn't yet?"

"No. But he _will_. He has to." 

Martin almost wanted to back up a little bit, just because the force of her words was a little scary. But he didn't, and felt a little brave for it. "I hope he's okay." 

All the anger drained out of Amy's face. "Me too," she said in a little voice. "I hope he's okay, and that his ship was just really broken, or he got lost, or something. That's awful, isn't it? To hope something horrible happened to his ship, because it's better than being forgotten?"

Martin shrugged. "Maybe. But," and he could feel himself turning bright red again, "but you'd be pretty hard to forget, so." And then he braced himself, sure that she was about to laugh at him.

She didn't laugh. Instead, she tilted her head to one side. "You think so?"

"I remembered you, didn't I? I mean, I know I don't fly a spaceship, so I probably don't have as much to remember, but I did only meet you once, and I remembered. Maybe it's the hair?"

Then she laughed, but it wasn't the sort of laugh Martin was used to hearing. It was kind, like he'd made a joke. He hadn't meant to, but maybe he had and just didn't realize it. He decided to keep trying to make accidental jokes, because he wanted to listen to her laugh again.

"Maybe it is," Amy answered. "Ginger power, huh? Since I remembered you, too."

Martin had forgotten that. "Yeah. You did, didn't you?" 

"You never answered my question, either. Are you a pilot yet?"

"N-no. Not yet. I couldn't be, the youngest you can qualify is seventeen, and I'm only fourteen, but I'll be fifteen soon, so that's only two more years, and I have to finish school first, and then maybe I'll go to flying school." He stopped. Amy was grinning at him, and it looked like she trying not to laugh. "What? Wait. You knew I couldn't be a pilot yet. Of course you did. That was a joke, wasn't it? Oh, no."

Amy giggled then. "Of course it was, idiot. Because you're cute when you get all worked up like that."

"What? _What_? I mean, what?"

She shrugged. "You heard me."

Martin wasn't at all sure that he had. He was also beginning to wonder if it really was possible to die from blushing too hard.

"Martin! Supper!"

It couldn't have come at a worse time. A beautiful day in the middle of Wales, sitting across from an enormously pretty girl who was smirking at him and thought he was cute -- and, even if she didn't mean quite in the way that Brad Pitt was cute, Martin was pretty sure she didn't mean cute the way little dogs and things were cute. And his dad _would_ have to call him.

Amy wrinkled her nose at him. "I don't really think Brad Pitt is all that cute."

"Oh, God. I've said all that out loud, haven't I?"

"A bit, yes. You could just invite me to supper, you know."

Martin was torn. On one hand, there was the utter humiliation Simon and Caitlyn would subject him to until the end of time. On the other, it would be a little bit longer he'd be able to be around Amy. He wasn't entirely sure that he hadn't imagined her, and, even if he had, he didn't want her to disappear just yet. "Right. I-- Yes. Would you? I mean, would you like to have dinner with us? Not just… my family would be there, too. And! I know you don't… but your aunt could come, too. If that would…"

"I'll go ask. Be right back." She ruffled his hair and ran off, leaving him to figure out how to even ask if a girl he'd met in the woods twice and her aunt could come for supper.

But eventually he managed, and Amy and her Aunt Sharon (who was nice enough, Martin concluded, but acted like she barely knew Amy) came to supper with the Crieffs. They brought marshmallows to toast over the fire.

Martin was sure he'd be hearing about it -- from every member of his family -- for years to come.

Later, to the raucous delight of his siblings and the stifled giggles from his parents and Amy's aunt, he and Amy went back to what Martin now thought of as their clearing. They'd said it was to look at the stars, but really it was to look at the stars and escape their families.

"Would you," he started, breaking the comfortable silence, "would you want to maybe spend tomorrow together? A little bit? I mean, it wouldn't have to be the whole day or anything, maybe just a little while in the afternoon?" They were lying on their backs, side by side, looking for shooting stars, and it had been a whole lot easier to ask her to spend time with him when she wasn't looking directly at him.

"Yes," she answered, much to Martin's surprise, "but I can't."

"Oh." Martin tried not to sound too disappointed. "Okay. That's. Yes. Okay."

She turned her head to look at him, and sat up, brushing stray bits of grass and leaves from her hair. "We're leaving in the morning. Back to Leadworth."

It was, quite possibly, the worst news Martin had ever heard. "So this is the last time I'll ever see you."

"Dramatic. No, I'm going to give you my phone number. And we can meet up here next year."

"Oh, right. Really?"

Even in the dark, he could see the tilt of her head, the 'of course, you idiot,' look on her face.

And then the alarm on her watch went off, marking five minutes until the curfew Martin's parents and Amy's aunt had agreed on. 

She'd told him not to be dramatic, but it still felt like the end of forever, and like he was about to wake up from the best dream he'd ever had. Martin expected at any moment to hear his mum announce that it was time for school.

He sat up, too, and she inched a little bit closer to him. And then a little bit more. 

And suddenly they were very close, indeed.

"Why do you like me?" he asked. Maybe it was a stupid question, right at that perfect moment, when he could catch the smell of strawberries from her hair on the breeze, and when the night was still except for soft woodsy sounds and the vague snatches of conversation they could overhear from nearby campsites. But he had to know.

She shrugged. "Told you, you're pretty cute." And then, softer, "Because you believed me. Because your people don't get you, either."

And then she kissed him. 

He was too surprised to react. Once he got over the shock, though, he kissed her back. He even forgot to be worried about whether he smelled okay or if his lips were chapped or too dry or anything. It was a little awkward when their noses bumped together, but the feel of her lips on his was worth all the awkwardness in the world. 

It felt like flying.

But then her watch chimed again, and they broke apart. Slowly, they got to their feet. Amy gave him a hand up, and pulled him into a hug, during which she kissed him again.

"See you soon, Martin," she whispered into his ear as they hugged goodbye.

***

There was a weird noise coming from the attic. 

Martin sighed. He was tired after a long flight home from Beijing, and weird noises were not on the list of things he particularly wanted to deal with. He hoped that it wasn't something that would interfere with his going to bed, and that it was something the landlord could deal with without Martin having to pay for. Either would be fine, really.

Warily, he opened the door.

There was a largeish blue phone box in the middle of his room.

The door opened.

"Oi! Aeroplane boy! Are you coming, or what? Just a quick spin," she said, poking her head out of the door, "around the universe. Fancy it?"

Martin peered inside, mouth falling open. Inside was like nothing he'd ever seen before. And two young men, standing around like it wasn't the most incredible thing that all that space existed in there. One had his arms crossed and was sort of glowering at Martin, his eyes flicking back to Amy every few moments. The other, Martin had seen before.

He was the man in Amy's drawings, the doll Amelia had had.

He gave Martin a little wave.

Martin looked back to Amy.

"Well? Come on, then." She grabbed his hand and pulled. "I did promise," she said, kissing him on the cheek, "remember?"


End file.
